Ed Gorman's Blog, page 222

Gee I sure have been waiting a long time for a reply...

Thanks to Todd Mason for sending me this and thanks to Barry Malzberg (a fine fine writer and author of one of the the truly GREAT novels about being a writer, Herovit's World) for letting me use it here. Donald Wollheim was one was one of the most important editors of science fiction in the history of the genre. He edited Ace Books for years then started his own publishing company DAW Books.

Martin Morse Wooster reports on FictionMags:

The October 13 MONTGOMERY (County, Maryland) GAZETTE has a profile of sometimes
fantasist Alice McDermott which reveals that the pay rate for reading
"unsolicited short stories" at REDBOOK in 1979 was 60 cents per short story.

Barry Malzberg adds:

Which post reminds me that the always cheery Donald Wollheim recalled for
me in 1968 COSMOPOLITAN fiction department attitude toward the slushpile.
Editor greeted an ex-Ace employee (an acquaintance of Don's) on her first
day of slushpile duty with these instructions: "You can do anything you want
with these. Read, reject, write letters on revision, write letters of
comment, have a little bonfire off the premises...just make sure that I
never see any of them for any reason, ever."

Shamus Winners (Lifted from The Rap Sheet)

Ed here: Congratulations to everybody, winners and nominess alike.

Best Hardcover P.I. Novel: Locked In, by Marcia Muller (Grand Central)

Also nominated: The Silent Hour, by Michael Koryta (Minotaur); Where the Dead Lay, by David Levien (Doubleday); Schemers, by Bill Pronzini (Forge); My Soul to Take, by Yrsa Sigurdardottir (William Morrow)

Best First P.I. Novel: Faces of the Gone, by Brad Parks (Minotaur)

Also nominated: Loser's Town, by Daniel Depp (Simon & Schuster); The Last Gig, by Norman Green (Minotaur); The Good Son, by Russel D. McLean (Minotaur); Chinatown Angel, by A.E. Roman (Minotaur)

Best Paperback Original P.I. Novel: Sinner's Ball, by Ira Berkowitz (Three Rivers Press)

Also nominated: Dark Side of the Morgue, by Raymond Benson (Leisure); Red Blooded Murder, by Laura Caldwell (Mira); Vengeance Road, by Rick Mofina (Mira); Body Blows, by Marc Strange (Dundurn)

Best P.I. Short Story: "Julius Katz," by Dave Zeltserman (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, September/October 2009)

Also nominated: "The Dark Island," by Brendan DuBois (from Boston Noir, edited by Dennis Lehane; Akashic); "Deadline Edition," by S.L. Franklin (Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, April 2009); "Blazin' on Broadway," by Gary Phillips (from Phoenix Noir, edited by Patrick Millikin; Akashic); "Suicide Bonds," by Tim L. Williams (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, March/April 2009)

Lifetime Achievement Award: Robert Crais

Keith Richards writes the book Keith Richards WOULD write

Richards: Mick Jagger was "unbearable"



Reuters – Rolling Stones Mick Jagger smiles on stage upon the screening of their film 'Shine A Light' during …

– Fri Oct 15, 11:04 am ET

LONDON (Reuters) – Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards says in his new autobiography that Mick Jagger became unbearable over the years and reveals he also calls the imperious lead singer "Your Majesty" and "Brenda."

The memoir is peppered with references to other celebrities -- from Johnny Depp to John Lennon -- but it is the prickly dynamic between Richards and Jagger that dominates the 527-page book, which is to be serialized in The Times newspaper.
Richards, 66, who met Jagger at the age of four, says he has not stepped foot in Jagger's dressing room in 20 years.

"It was the beginning of the Eighties when Mick started to become unbearable," Richards writes in the memoir, "Life," which brought him an advance of 4.8 million pounds ($7.7 million) after a massive bidding war among publishers.
Richards and Jagger were two of the Stones' founding members in 1962 and wrote its hit songs, leading the group to sales of more than 200 million albums worldwide.

"Sometimes I think: 'I miss my friend,'" Richards writes. "I wonder: 'where did he go?'"

But Richards told the Times that his bandmate had read the book and wanted to take out only one thing -- a reference to Jagger using a voice coach.

Richards refused, saying: "I'm trying to say the truth here."
He added about Jagger: "We've had our beefs but, hey, who doesn't? You try and keep something together for 50 years," adding the band was considering going on tour again.

"I think it's going to happen. I've had a chat with ... Her Majesty. Brenda."

The band's last tour ended in August 2007, sparking the customary speculation that there would be no more.

for the rest go here:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20101015/p...

Forgotten Books: Golden Blood by Jack Williamson

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For Forgotten Books this week James Reasoner discussed some of Gardener Fox's sword and sorcery-science fiction work. As much as I liked Fox's comic book work (he was my favorite DC writer from the late Forties through the early Sixties) I never quite took to most of his novels.

But mention of him made me pick up one of my all-time favorite adventure novels, GOLDEN BLOOD by Jack Williamson. I'm now about a hundred pages in and I'm enjoying it as much as I did in my early teen years. It's set in the Arabian desert right after World War One, features a fabled city that has been whispered about for longer than five centuries, and is protected by fanatics who must guard a selected few who may or may not be immortal. Williamson's descriptions of the desert and fights and pursuits across the sands at night are spectacular. And so are his people. I don't mean in any Chekovian way but for adventure fiction stereotypes they're memorable simply because each of the major players plans to double-cross all the others as soon as they find the fabled city of gold. Williamson brings everything alive; everything.

I'm enjoying this in a way I haven't enjoyed simple pure storytelling in a long time. For those who like adventure, I'm sure you can find an inexpensive copy on line. Lancer did two editions of it in the Sixties, one for sixty cents and one for seventy five. Williams was always one of my favorite sf-horror writers. Darker Than You Think still ranks in my top ten werewolf novels of all time. This was pure pulp at its best.

The book was originally a two-part Weird Tales serial in 1933. The famous John Allen St. John did both the covers and the interior illustrations.

DARK CITY UNDERGROUND REVIEWS STRANGLEHOLD

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DARK CITY UNDERGROUND

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 13, 2010

STRANGLEHOLD by Ed Gorman

Dev Conrad—the cynical yet hopeful political consultant from Ed Gorman's 2008 novel Sleeping Dogs—returns in Gorman's latest novel Stranglehold. Conrad is a Chicago-based political consultant who has one serious flaw; he has a conscience. He plays to win, but he has an antiquated sense of fairness. A trait that isn't in high demand in American politics.

Susan Cooper is an ideal candidate—she is attractive, intelligent, well spoken and personable—but as the election nears she becomes erratic and secretive. Dev Conrad is called in as a trouble-shooter to find out the problem and put a leash on the candidate. It's not a quick fix however—Cooper is unmoved in her strange behavior and the clues Conrad finds lead him both to and away from his target.

Stranglehold is everything a mystery should be: dark, witty, plot driven, but populated by characters that matter, and it is never generic. Gorman takes a standard plot—murder, blackmail, lust—and breaths new life into it with twists that surprise the reader and invigorate the story. It is a murder mystery, but its cock-eyed slant tracks the story into unexpected territory.

The opening line reads: "All roads lead to motels." A standard theme in detective fiction—the seedy motel where unspeakable madness occurs—but Gorman uses it as a kind of foil. Not a trick by any standard, but he turns the trope against itself as well as the reader.

Ed Gorman is the most reliable writer of suspense currently working. His plots—see above—are always clever and tight, his prose is smooth and hard at once, his narrative his steady and his dialogue is crystal. But his real power is with the people that populate his stories. His work has a dark cynicism about it, but that cynicism is rarely projected onto his characters. There is hope in the behavior of his characters—they tend to be kind, solid, melancholy and very real (flawed). The hero is as flawed as the antagonist, but it is the flaws, and how the character manages them, that generate compassion and interest from the reader.

Stranglehold is different from the first Dev Conrad novel: Sleeping Dogs. It is darker. There is less humor, although there is plenty if you enjoy your humor dry and subtle. The differences between the two novels is interesting only on an intellectual level because both are entertaining. The bottom line is, Stranglehold is the real deal. It is another example of just how good Ed Gorman is at his craft. It is also a reminder of the injustice that his name isn't on the same lists as Stephen King, Dean Koontz and the rest of the high quality bestsellers.
POSTED BY BEN BOULDEN AT 8:30 PM 0 COMMENTS

Forgotten Books: The Crimes of Jordan Wise, by Bill Pronzini.

Forgotten Books: The Crimes of Jordan Wise, by Bill Pronzini.

While this fine novel was published in 2006, I think it's appropriate here because while it got its due critically it deserved a much larger audience.

Actuary Jordan Wise tells a joke on himself a third of the way through the novel: (paraphrase) an actuary is somebody who doesn't have the personality to be an accountant.

If you watch many true crime shows, you see a lot of Jordan Wises. People who fall into crime through circumstance rather than those who go looking for it.

Jordan becomes a criminal only after meeting Annalise, a troubled and very attractive young woman who needs two things badly – sex and money. But in order to get the sex on a regular basis, Jordan must first provide the money. He embezzles a half million dollars and flees with Annalise to the Virgin Islands. In this first part of the novel, there's nice James M. Cainian detail about how Jordan comes alive for the first time in his life. Some of this is due, whether he admits it or not, to the danger of committing a serious crime. But most of it is due to Annalise and his profound sexual awakening.

The central section of the book reminds me of one of Maugham's great South Seas tales – lust, betrayal, shame played out against vast natural beauty and a native society that, thanks to an old sea man named Bone, that Jordan comes to see value in – even if Annalise, her head filled with dreams of Paris and glamor, does not. Old Maugham got one thing right for sure – as Pronzini demonstrates here – a good share of humanity, wherever you find them, are both treacherous and more than slightly insane.

There are amazing sections of writing about sea craft and sailing that remind me not of old Travis McGee but of the profoundly more troubled and desperate men of Charles Williams who find purity and peace only in the great and epic truths of the sea. That they may be as crazed and treacherous as everybdy else does not seem to bother them unduly.

There are also amazing sections (almost diaristic sections) where Jordan tells of us his fears and desires, his failings and his dreams. In places he deals vididly, painfully with his secret terror of not being enough of a man in any sense to hold Annalise.

The publisher calls this a novel and so it is. Pronzini brings great original width and breadth to the telling of this dark adventure that is both physical and spiritual. He has never written a better novel, the prose here literary in the best sense, lucid and compelling, fit for both action and introspection.

You can't read a page of this without seeing it in movie terms. The psychologically violent love story played out against a variety of contemporary settings gives the narrative great scope. And in Jordan Wise and Annalise he has created two timeless people. This story could have been set in ancient Egypt or Harlem in 1903 or an LA roller skating disco in 1981. As Faulkner said, neither the human heart nor the human dilemma ever changes.
posted by Ed Gorman @ 1:06 PM 0 comments links to this post

Interesting idea: Kindle "singles"

Amazon Apple books e-books iPad Jeff Bezos Kindle Kindle Singles Media
Amazon to Launch Story-Length 'Kindle Singles'
By Dylan Stableford
Published: October 12, 2010 @ 1:42 pm

Amazon announced on Tuesday the launch of "Kindle Singles," e-books that bridge the gap between magazine features and novel-length works – and what the company hopes could do for book publishing what the $.99 "single" did for iTunes.

In its announcement, Amazon described the "singles" as "Kindle books that are twice the length of a New Yorker feature or as much as a few chapters of a typical book." The company said they will be between 10,000 and 30,000 words, or roughly 30-to-90 pages in length, and will be priced accordingly.

Amazon did not specify what that pricing would be, and the company did not immediately respond to a pair of requests seeking comment. Full-length e-books typically cost $9.99 in the Kindle Store.

"Kindle Singles will have their own section in the Kindle Store and be priced much less than a typical book," Amazon said.

The company is calling on "serious writers, thinkers, scientists, business leaders, historians, politicians and publishers to join Amazon in making such works available to readers around the world." Amazon is asking "interested parties" to contact digital-publications@amazon.com

for the rest go here:
http://www.thewrap.com/media/column-p...

Let The Right One In by John Ajvide Lundvquist

I read a pretty compelling review of this novel so I thought I'd give it a try. I'm glad I did. This is the source for Swedish film of the same name that won all the awards at festivals. The film was remade here as Let Me In but was apparently not as good as the original and tanked.

The book is often compared to Stephen King's wildly enjoyable Salem's Lot which it definitely resembles. The difference is that King used all the colors to recreate his Maine town and its inhabitants. There is great humor and warmth in his vampire tale. Plus it scares the hell out of you.

Well, Let The Right One In scares the hell out of you but writer John Ajvide Lindqvist uses only different shades of gray (and black) for his tale. The setting is a small town in Sweden, one that is far down the economic scale. And that informs everything in the book. Twelve-year-old Oskar is the central character and largely through his eyes we see a series of serial killings so savage they'd make Hannibal Lechter blanch. Ultimately the killings touch on everybody in the small town, from the bullies who pick on Oskar constantly to the mother who overprotects him to the police detectives who are afraid to admit to themselves what is really going on.

This is a vampire novel without most of the usual vampire tropes. Lindqvist gives us a look at a cross-section of Swedish citizens who live lives of quiet desperation we hear so much about over here. But it is the strange girl Eli who fixes Oskar's attention and who teaches him to not just defend himself but to anticipate the bully attacks and make them afraid of him. The relationship of Oskar and Eli is pretty rendered and creates a vampire myth that should endure.

An amazing work of popular fiction. Now I'm on to his second novel.

Vince Keenan interviews Ed Gorman

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For the interview go here: (Thanks, Vince)

http://blog.vincekeenan.com/

Pick a Pair of Penzlers

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Otto Penzler's editorial hand can be found on two important collections this fall. The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories by Otto Penzler and Keith Alan Deutsch is a massive anthology that is an ideal companion to his earlier The Big Book of Pulp Stories. The centerpiece has to be the version of Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon as it was published in serial form in Black Mask.

But even given such names as Raymond Chandler, Erle Stanley Gardner and John D. MacDonald, the most interesting material comes from the writers who never quite broke out of the pulps. Writers such as Fredric Brown, Day Keene, William Campbell Gault, Lester Dent, Norbert Davis demonstrate not only how good Black Mask was but also how varied it was in subject matter and approach.

Another feature of this giant book is the artwork from the original publication. I don't have to say any more, do I?

The Best American Noir of The Century edited by James Ellroy and Otto Penzler starts in 1923 and comes all the way up to 2007. Cornell Woolrich, David Morrell, Jim Thompson, Ellroy himself number among the more prominent names but there are treats to be had from writers of every stripe. If you've never read William Gay, for instance, here's an opportunity to see just how fine a prose stylist and how devious a storyteller he is. I was particularly interested in the MacKinlay Kantor story that was the basis for the iconic noir film "Gun Crazy." (I have a story in here, too.)

Ellroy and Penzler have managed to show how rich the noir tale can be. There are literary stories, pulp thrillers and, as with the William Gay story, a take on the clash of old and new Americas in a quietly horrorific tale that is not only appropriate to our troubled times but also has the power of myth in its ending.

A collection that belongs on the shelf of every reader of crime fiction.